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Friday, June 22, 2018

#2032: Chuck Morse

Chuck Morse is a rightwing radio host and, well, journalist of sorts, perhaps most notable for his attempted write-in campaign against Barney Frank for the 2004 Massachusetts’s 4th congressional district elections (he did not get enough certified signatures to appear on the ballot). Morse is also the author of Was Hitler a Leftist?, which was heavily promoted by the WND, and in which Morse (among much else) argues that President Obama is “worse than a communist” and, in fact, a Nazi or at least more akin to a “national socialist” than a communist. You see, contrary to popular opinion (fact, in fact), Nazism, according to Morse, is a leftist philosophy, not a right-wing one; and the parallels to the Obama administration are obvious: Hallmarks of a nazi rule that Morse identifies include a national welfare system, nationalization of police forces, and a centralized regulation of private businesses; these are apparently the elements that reallycharacterizes nazism.

Then, in the very next paragraph of his book, and completely without irony, Morse presents one of the most obvious pieces of evidence in his case for the claim that the Obama administration and the Left are like nazis: the use of demonization. Many leftists today, says Morse, don’t just say that their political opponents are wrong but really want to hurt them.

We’ll just leave it there for readers to assess.

At present Morse seems to be primarily trying to expose the Deep State.

Diagnosis: Self-awareness is difficult, and your lack of it better be serious to count as a loon on lack-of-self-awareness grounds alone. But Morse makes his lack of self-awareness into something of an art form. Congratulations.

6 comments:

Please correct two errors in this description. Firstly, I was on the ballot in the Massachusetts 4th district congressional race as an independent in 2004. Secondly, my book “Was Hitler a Leftist” does not refer to President Obama as a communist. He is barely mentioned as the book is primarily about Hitler and his political orientation. Please be decent enough to make these corrections and probably others as by doing so you might stand a chance of being taken seriously.

Thanks for your feedback. We strive for accuracy (though care less about being taken *seriously*), and have changed the date. We did, however, not think that the book referred to Obama as a communist; indeed, it quite obviously doesn't. We have, however, adjusted the original formulation to make it clearer that Obama is not a main topic of the book.

Sigh. I agree that the binary "left/right" is a crappy way to distinguish political positions that are defined along a range of parameters. No, neither North Korea nor Nazi Germany were libertarians, that's true. But rejecting limited government does not make you leftwing or socialist.

The main reason the Nazis are best characterized as "rightwing" are because they, like all the other fascist regimes in Europe, explicitly identified socialists and communists as their main enemy, and carried out a brutal persecution of socialists, leftists and liberalists (of various forms), while constantly seeking to align themselves with traditional conservatives ("conservatives" here in the European, Burkean sense; in practice usually various types of royalists). Indeed, the Nazi party did early on have a way more socialist program, but that changed during the Bamberg meeting in 1926 when Hitler completely denounced leftism and completely ruined the influence of the leftwing faction of the party, the Strasser faction (worth mentioning that Goebbels belonged to that leftwing faction, but didn't seem to care overly much, and quickly renounced his leftist leanings in favor of loyalty to Hitler.)

Snopes has an OK short review of the issue here, and this exchange is OK for those who prefer the even more superficial version. The Nazi party was rightwing by any reasonable definition of that term, though I agree that the term is bad insofar as the relationship between various political positions need way more dimensions than a right-left axis.

Trying to use "Judeo-Christian values" as a way of identifying the left or right is just plain silly. Nazism, with its focus on chosen peoples, is at least as Judeo-Christian (and not) as libertarianism. Freedom, liberty and autonomy are important Western values, but they are certainly not Judeo-Christian values (indeed, as values they contradict the traditional value set of Christianity, which is instead based on subservience, domination and self-sacrifice). Those values came to prominence in the West only in the 17th century, with people like Locke who sought a secular foundation for ethics, and in rather direct conflict with the value systems of the church. Yes, a historical line can be traced from classic liberalism to protestantism's focus on the relationship between people and God as personal relationship - a view of freedom and autonomy as core values comes naturally when you take those considerations to where they naturally lead you. But that doesn't mean that the church could or did recognize those values. They couldn't and didn't.

Don't argue with this moron. Chuck.... I am from Massachusetts, brother. C'mon you and I both know that you don't ever stand a snowball's chance in hell of being anyone of consequence in politics here or nationally. Just sit down, dude. You are wasting good people's oxygen at this point. I'll help ya find the nursing home... c'mon it's this way...(gestures towards wheelchair)